


Delirium Tremens

by passeridae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Body Horror, Burns, Gore, M/M, Survivor Guilt, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 20:47:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19753531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/passeridae/pseuds/passeridae
Summary: Gabriel is sitting on a stack of crates staring at him. This is impossible, because Gabriel is dead.(Jack goes through withdrawal. This is not a fun process)





	Delirium Tremens

Gabriel is sitting on a stack of crates staring at him. This is impossible, because Gabriel is dead. 

Pressed against the corner of his bed, back to the sandstone of the necropolis, Jack stares back at Gabriel with as much emotion he can manage. Most of it is fear, but there’s a concoction of rage, regret, and sorrow swirling around underneath it all that makes him want to retch. The sheen of sweat on his brow and the shakes that wrack his body make his staring less effective than it could be, but it’s the thought that counts, he supposes. Not like there’s anyone else here to judge him on his facial expressions anymore, anyways. God, the worst part of being Strike Commander was always the politicking, hands down. Every motion, every facial twitch, everything ready to be used against him as soon as he said anything wrong. Exhausting. 

His mind is wandering more than usual tonight. Jack reaches for the bottle of whisky by his bedside, trying to tamp his thoughts down to something more manageable. Just like the last time he tried to take a drink, it’s empty.

Gabriel doesn’t move, doesn’t seem to breathe under his gaze. Perhaps he is dead, here to haunt Jack from beyond the grave. It would serve him right after all. After how many people he hurt, all the people he failed to protect. It would be fitting, almost just, to be followed around by a spectre to remind him of his failure. The weight of it is almost crushing already, gripping around his chest like one of Reinhardt’s hugs, pushing the air from his lungs. It hurts to breathe, has hurt since Zurich, but tonight it’s especially sharp, especially present. The bottle is still empty in his hand. 

“If you’re here to teach me a lesson, you’re too late. I’m too old to make any use of them,” he tells Gabriel through tensed jaw and chattering teeth. It’s so hot, he’s shivering. He really wishes he had some whisky. Needs to smooth this away to something hazy and dull, not this sharp stabbing ache.

Gabriel smirks and opens his mouth. Black smoke pours out to envelop them both.

* * *

Terror has its claws sunk deep into Jack’s chest, ripping at his insides with almost vengeful glee. His stomach cramps, pressing its way up his throat in fits and starts. Gabriel stands at the end of his cot, head tilted to the side like an owl observing its prey. Silent and still once more, excepting his hands which clench and unclench intermittently as if he wants to wring Jack’s neck. 

A flashback to a lifetime ago, the two of them the last left in a meeting room, discussing Blackwatch after it was thrust into the light. Gabriel’s fists starting that same pattern. Clenching and opening, over and over. Raised voices, sharper and sharper until Jack had stormed out in a rage. That night they had gone to bed in silence, their hands twined between them, Gabriel’s pressed tight around Jack’s like a shield. Still so soft, even through their anger.

The Gabriel here and now says nothing, just stares at him with a painful intensity. Jack tightens his grip around the cot’s frame, trying to ground himself or to stop himself from shaking apart. He’s still shivering, like he’s hypothermic, except he’s so hot that he’s sweated clean through his clothing. Where he sits is a patch of dampness that spreads dark like blood around him.

Or perhaps it is blood. He looks down at his chest to check for bullet wounds, presses shaking hands to his chest. His gaze sweeps back up as the smell of meat wafts towards him. The smell makes him want to be sick, but more than that Ana’s away, there shouldn’t be anyone else here. He examines all the entrances visible from his current location, pressing down the rising nausea that comes from moving his head. 

A low chuckle has him turning back to face Gabriel, no longer hale, but charring, fireless, before his eyes. Skin bubbling and blistering and popping, fat melting and flaring until he’s nothing but sinew and bone. The smell of pork grows and grows. It’s like the omnic crisis all over again, all those people reduced to meat, but it’s so much worse because its Gabriel hurting and burning and he — he can’t take it anymore. Gorge rises in his throat, pressing up and up until he has to lean over the side of the cot to vomit his stomach’s contents on the floor. 

He spits into the mess, heaving breaths into his chest. Zurich. It smells like Zurich, not the crisis, burning flesh and dust and it’s his fault, it’s all his fault, how didn’t he see the signs before he killed Gabe. Guilt tightens his chest. The tremors haven’t stopped and his head is pounding. His fingers have left deep indents in the metal frame under him. Blinking, his vision blurs with water. “I’m sorry, Gabriel, I miss you,” he rasps out. ‘It should have been me,’ he can’t bring himself to say.

When he finally lifts his gaze, he’s alone.

* * *

Their feet are pressed together, hands clasped between them. It’s dark, the only sound their breathing and the frantic thumping of Jack’s heart in his chest. It smells of smoke and something sharp and bitter, coating the back of his throat like ash. Gabriel’s thumb brushes across the back of his knuckles, soft as down. “Your love was a poison,” he whispers, sweet as any of the endearments they murmured to each other late at night when nobody else could hear, “Didn’t you wonder why everyone left you?”

Jack tightens his grip on Gabriel’s hands, tense in their loose embrace. Gabriel tangles their feet together, traps Jack’s feet under his own. Curled close enough to share air — the two of them were one entity, they used to joke. JackAndGabe, ready to take on the world, or at least the omnic threat.

A kiss is pressed to Jack’s knuckles, warm against his skin. “You destroy everyone you love, trying to make them just as perfect as you,” murmured reverent in tone as the lips pull away. Jack swears he can feel the heat of Gabriel’s skin, the fant tickle of a loosed curl against his own forehead as Gabriel lays his head on the pillow next to him. The sheets are bunched under them, uncomfortable, but he can’t bring himself to move. It’s been so long since anyone has touched him this tenderly, this softly, like he was something other than an enemy. His chest is tight, he struggles to breathe as he tries to press himself even closer even as the words make him flinch away.

Jack and Gabriel, two halves of a whole. Even in the worst of their fights, the worst of their disagreeing and yelling and raging, they still slept like lovers. Tangled together hand and foot, sharing air as they finally let themselves peel away titles and obligations to once again be people. 

That smell is stronger now, bile and smoke and something greasy in his mouth, sharp like venom down his throat. It hurts to swallow, his eyes start to water with the strength of it. Between the wall at his back and Gabriel at his front, he should feel safe, but his heart thunders in his chest and he can’t seem to shake the sense that something is terribly, terribly wrong.

“It ate away at me until there was nothing left.” Gabriel’s breath ghosts intimate over his ear, close enough to kiss. “In the end, killing me was a kindness.”

* * *

Gabriel is sitting on a stack of crates near his cot, staring at Jack like he’s something to be pitied. 

“You’re dead,” Jack tells him, trying not to squint through his pounding headache, “I killed you because I was a coward.” He feels like he’s going to be sick.

“You did,” Gabriel agrees, mild as anything, setting his feet on the ground. Jack notices that, absurdly, he’s barefoot. This detail seems important somehow, though he can’t place why. 

A series of convulsions rip through him, one after the other after the other, leaving him panting on the bed at the end of them, curled as small as possible. He thinks he may have thrown up at some stage, but he can’t recall. The smell of sickness wafts up from the floor, pungent and acrid. He aches. 

“It hurts,” Jack grits out, plaintive. “You deserve it,” Gabriel informs him, moving closer across the stone. As he walks, his body starts to rot. Bubbles of blackness bloom on his skin and spread like roots until he’s webbed in darkness, then completely consumed by it. “After what you did, you deserve so much more pain than this.”

By the time Gabriel sits on the side of the bed, there’s no skin left on him at all. What little remains of his flesh sloughs off and explodes into dust as it hits the bed and the floor, dark and ashy. Jack’s fingers are stained by it, and he’s irrationally terrified that it’s going to consume him, too. He scrubs and scrubs at his hands, but the darkness refuses to budge. Gabriel’s hand comes down over his, pressing them flat. “Out damn spot,” he mutters to the space near Jack, then, “That’s not going to help you.”

Jack’s trying with all his willpower to keep his panic under control, and failing. This has never happened to him before, he’s always been able to control it even in the worst parts of the war, why is he failing now? “Gabriel, what do I do?” he chokes out through sharp breaths.

The darkness that used to be Gabriel chuckles, raspy and metallic, “You killed Gabriel, no point asking him.”

Jack looks up, desperate, only to see the owl mask that haunts his battlefields staring back at him. “Reaper,” he hisses, fear turning to anger in a wave of prickling heat that feels more like sickness than he’s willing to admit. He tries to jump for his rifle, to punch him, to do anything, but Reaper holds his hands down with one of his own and makes a derisive little sound. 

“Don’t you remember me, Jack? After all, you’re the one who made me.” Reaper’s free hand disengages the mask from his face, pulls it away. Once the darkness clears, Jack’s voice catches in his throat, strangles him more effectively than any rope. “No,” he mouths, “no, no.”

Gabriel’s face stares back at him, lip curled in disdain. Jack starts shaking again, stronger and stronger until he finds himself pressed against the wall, bruises forming along his arms and head where he’d hit them against the cot and stone. He can taste blood in his mouth. He jerks back, hits the wall behind him, covers his face with his hands like that will take the knowledge from his brain, keep him safe. Tears leak from the corners of his eyes, and burn his skin as they fall.

* * *

The first thing that Ana notices when she walks through the entrance to the necropolis is the smell. Stale sick, old sweat. Jack curled up on his cot, looking wan, is hardly a surprise after that. 

“I told you not to trust the street vendor on El-Malek, he’s made bad food since I was a girl,” she tells Jack as she strips him and shoves him in their shower. At least he hadn’t thrown up on anything important, not like when they were in Egypt during the crisis. The heat and the smell had made that entire mission particularly unpleasant. She sighs, bundling up Jack’s clothing, this was the fourth time this had happened, he really couldn’t be trusted to tell if food was good or not. 

After Jack’s washed and dried, she checks his temperature again, still too high. Heart beating fast as a bird’s, too, he must have eaten something really bad this time. Chicken, probably, it was always the chicken. She jabs a biotic dart into him, grabs an unopened water bottle to force down his throat once he was awake. She sits down, only to have her wrist grabbed, hard, pressing the bones of her arm against each other. The urge to pull away is reflexive, ingrained, but her arm doesn’t budge. When she looks over, Jack’s eyes are open, bloodshot and glassy. His pupils are pinpricks. 

“It’s Gabe, Ana.”

“What?” That had come from nowhere. Gabriel was dead, had been for a while now. An old hurt for both of them, better buried. Had Jack been hallucinating as well? That was a new symptom, though given how bad he looks, not exactly surprising.

“Reaper. It’s Gabe, it’s been him all along.” Jack’s grip on her wrist is bruising, his eyes unblinking, trying to impart the truth of his words. He’s begun shaking again.

She shushes him, tries to get him to settle. Gets him to drink water, then some broth for the salts. She wants to reject the idea outright, wants to laugh it off, but now that Jack’s mentioned it the similarities are there. The shotguns, the dramatic flair. Anyone can do the drama, but dual-wielding shotguns takes specific training. And Reaper had only come into view after the Zurich explosion, hadn’t he? She huffs through her nose. Briefly closes her eyes. The idea is definitely something to consider further, once Jack was recovered and no longer in danger of dehydration. It’d do her no good now, though, with Jack shivering and retching still. Honestly, she was going to have words with that street vendor, this was ridiculous.

She puts it from her mind until she has time to look at it again.

Reaper happens to them first.


End file.
